New and Notable: Jack Black and Jason Segel

While writing about Jack Black's forthcoming movie Gulliver's Travels this morning, I stumbled on an article about a new holiday recording and animated video by Black and Jason Segel. The song is a parody of the classic TV special duet of Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy by Bing Crosby and David Bowie. The video is featured on the website CollegeHumor.com and the website's YouTube channel.

The animation is very well done and creative. I liked the song and decided to download it from iTunes. What I discovered there was an unexpected horror (at least for an album art lover). The cover art that is being distributed with the digital download (right) is about the worst imaginable.

Not only is the image ugly, it is over compressed. To top it off, it doesn't even have the correct title of the song!

I am always unhappy to see poor-quality artwork used for recordings. When there is a video or other elements of the project that have great illustrations or photography, it is even more upsetting.

I can't imagine why an image from the cartoon was not used for the cover art. Perhaps there was a dispute over paying the animator a fee. Whatever the reason, the result is an inferior product.

In any event, I decided to use this as an opportunity to play creative director and create my own version of the cover for Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy. It only took about an hour to create an image that will look much better in my iTunes cover flow.

I decided to make my version of the cover look like an aged 7" single sleeve. I used a screen grab from the video for the illustration and some cool retro fonts from Font Diner. Just imagine what could be done using actual images from the original animation.